


Waking Prayers

by Page161of180



Series: Nights and Mornings [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: 4x13 non-compliant, Emotional Infidelity, Everyone Is Alive, M/M, Quentin POV, Quentin and Eliot work their shit out, Quentin is just never a good boyfriend to Alice, Quentin owns want he really wants, and Eliot finally admits what he does, listen, post 4x12, resolving the triangle that I never wanted in the first place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-10 00:01:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18927211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Page161of180/pseuds/Page161of180
Summary: It wasn’t like that anymore. He and Eliot weren’t-- they didn’t. Because Quentin was with Alice. And being with Alice, the way they were now-- it made sense, for Quentin. Or, it had made sense, when there was the Monster, and Quentin hadn’t thought there was a possibility with Eliot, even if-- even when they got him back.In a weird way, it had made even more sense once Eliot came back (thank God thank God thank God) and revealed that, guess what, he did want Quentin after all. Because Quentin always wanted too much from the people and things he loved, from Alice to Eliot to Fillory; how many times did he have to learn that lesson? And after-- after-- everything, fuck-- these last six months. Maybe it was time to accept what Eliot had always known, even if he’d forgotten a little, understandably, after being trapped alone inside a monster for so long: that no one would choose to sign up for fifty years of tending to the gaping black hole inside Quentin.And then came that night, last month.





	Waking Prayers

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up to a piece called Bedtime Stories, which was written before the Season 4 finale, and which involved Eliot figuring out what it would mean to be 'brave' in a world where he came back from being possessed to find that Quentin and Alice had rekindled their romantic relationship. After the finale decided that, nope, even *that* kind of gratuitous suffering wasn't *nearly* enough suffering for Eliot, I figured I wouldn't revisit this possible future. But of late, I've felt a craving to go back and let Quentin deal with the fallout of Eliot's revelations and to finally resolve this triangle. 
> 
> In terms of plot, what you need to know is that this story assumes all events through 4x12 happened as we saw on the show, and then *presto* unspecified events occur, and Eliot returns and all imminent threats to the universe are neutralized, without any of our core characters dying. That's-- pretty much as much as deep into the question of how it all went down as this story gets. The real focus here is the emotional fallout. 
> 
> And speaking of emotional fallout, please allow me to caveat the following: There's no Alice-hate to be had here (or Quentin-hate, or Eliot-hate), but my more-or-less unshakable priors are that Quentin and Alice make some sense on the surface but are incompatible on a deeper level, whereas Quentin and Eliot are a surface-level disaster but are built on bedrock devotion and support. This diptych is very much about Quentin and Eliot working their shit out, and Alice is definitely the casualty of that. There's no immediate happy ending for Alice here, and frankly, Quentin treats her appallingly, even if (as always with Quentin) he doesn't mean to. But I really do think that any happy ending for Alice starts with her *not* being in a romantic relationship with Quentin anymore, so in that way, this is a start for her, too.

  


1.

 

Mornings at the mosaic had gone through-- phases, probably, was the word Quentin was looking for.

 

In the early days, that first year, their routine had been-- well, not that far off from Brakebills, honestly, minus the perpetual hangovers and, in Eliot’s words, _sheets with an actual thread count, not that I’d expect_ you _to notice the difference, Mr. Polyblend_. He and Eliot would wake up when they’d wake up, sometimes on opposite sides of the little cot, sometimes pretending it was just, like, super-casual spooning that they were doing, sometimes only one of them in the bed and the other passed out by mosaic. They’d pick around at whatever there was to eat in the cottage and shave and pointedly _not_ talk about how if it was _actually_ Brakebills, there’d be Margo and-- _yeah_. When the sun got high enough that “morning” was more or less just a tactful euphemism, they’d give in and start the day’s bickering over another unsolvable problem.

 

The addition of sex to their relationship didn’t have much impact on their routine (how could it, when they were _leaving the overthinking for the puzzle,_ right, Eliot?), except that instead of pretending the spooning was casual, Quentin could whine and rub back against Eliot’s morning wood until Eliot would relent and wrap his big, warm hand around Quentin ( _his hands were always warm, even his rings_ ), and chuckle in Quentin’s ear and say _you really are so fucking needy_ , but then suck in a breath, _hard_ , like nothing turned him on more than giving Quentin the things that Quentin wanted.

 

And Quentin _always_ wanted. It was a problem, really-- or. It _had_ been. Before. Because-- no one could actually have the patience to put up with Quentin’s constant, grinding _need_ for affection, and attention, and _more more more_ , right? His dad and Julia had tried to keep up-- in, not in romantic ways, obviously. His mom hadn’t even done that. And he had been fine with that, once he’d been able to-- to put it into context. Quentin _got_ it. He was supposed to be the lover, and not the beloved, and that was probably more noble anyway, right? A lifetime of fantasy novels had definitely implied as much. But then there was-- God, _Alice_ , their first time around. She was beautiful and brilliant and so far out of his league and he’d tried _so hard_ to, like, earn his keep and give her all the love he felt for her, and not ask for too much back. Except that he even fucked that up, apparently, because even just-- _accepting_ his love, the way he loved, was apparently exhausting.

 

So when all of a sudden--

 

(Okay, _not_ all of a sudden; it was a long time coming. It was since day four at the mosaic when Eliot had stood up and taken off his shirt to wash it and Quentin’s mouth had gone dry. It was since day one at Brakebills when Eliot had stood up and put his cigarette out and Quentin’s mouth had gone dry.)

 

So when _finally_ Quentin was waking up at the mosaic with Eliot cackling about _what a bratty bottom you are_ , but then cradling Quentin’s wrung-out body to his chest when he finally came, always after Quentin and always like it was a _surprise_ \-- well. It felt like an epiphany, honestly. Because there was, apparently, one person in one world that actually _wanted_ to give and give and not stop giving to Quentin, not even when Quentin was an undeniable jackass or couldn’t get out of bed for days on end. And if Eliot had a million more and less creative reasons not to talk about what it all meant? If Eliot said _it’s okay, Q, you don’t have to_ , the mornings that Quentin tried to make breakfast for _him_ , for a change? If he had put his whole hand over Quentin’s mouth and said those same words, when Quentin had thumbed at the tears glistening on his cheek, that one morning two weeks before he’d married Ari? That was also a kind of giving. And Quentin took that, too.

 

The bigger changes to their mornings came after that. First with Arielle--who, _just for the record_ , Eliot _encouraged_ him to ask out, all, _she makes you happy_ , while Quentin heard, _God, can’t someone else tap in to handle your bullshit now and then_?

 

Then, with Teddy. Who didn’t so much _change_ their morning routine as obliterate the concept of a morning routine. Or a morning. Or a distinction between night and day, honestly, at least for the first year.

 

Then, with-- with _not_ Arielle, anymore.

 

After that, mornings fell into a new pattern, just the two of them and Teddy. Morning sex was straight out, except when Teddy got old enough to occasionally stay over with friends in the closest village. Instead, mornings were about hassling ( _Quentin_ ) or alternately sweet-talking and commanding ( _Eliot_ ) Teddy to get his ass out of bed and do his chores, the mosaic start time getting earlier and earlier in service of that project, because it was apparently impossible to sleep through the clinking of the tiles _and_ your dads’ perpetual cool-tones-versus-warm-tones griping. Eliot had gotten mellower and less barbed in his sweetness somewhere along the line, and he would kiss Quentin softly on those mornings, as he handed him a bowl of oatmeal and a spoon, while Teddy gagged in the background, as theatrical as Eliot had ever been. And Quentin would think, around a mouthful of runny oats mixed with syrup from the weird shrub that Eliot insisted without proof was the Fillorian equivalent of agave, _God, I love you_ . But he always remembered, _that’s okay, Q, you don’t have to_ , and bitched about the lack of decent, non-talking breakfast meats, instead.

 

It was one of the constants of those mornings that he remembered without actually living: Eliot saying _you don’t have to_ , and Quentin hearing _please don’t_.

 

It was only balled up on a couch, another world and a hundred years removed, that Quentin finally wondered, with his heart in his throat, whether _you don’t have to_ had actually meant _I’m afraid to ask_.

 

 

2.

 

Alice was already there, perched on the coffee table beside the big leather sectional, when Quentin opened his eyes, memories of mornings past (alternate past?) still running through his mind. Her mouth was even and her eyes were steady behind her sexy librarian glasses (not-- God, not _that_ kind of librarian, and, seriously, fuck the Library for complicating a perfectly good fantasy, even more than Quentin complicated it just by being who he was and having to work so hard to want the _right_ amount, and not be that needy mess anymore, the one always crying _let me love you, Niffin Alice_ , and _kiss me, El_ , and _fuck me, El_ , and _love me forever, El, and never leave me, even when I get married_ , and _again again again_ \--). The sight probably should have been either more or less jarring than it was, honestly.

 

 _More_ , because Alice was his girlfriend, and he loved her (he _did_ \-- even though he knew it wasn’t a thing that he should feel the need to insist on, just because it was-- just because he was being _considerate_ this time, and responsible, giving her just the parts she could deal with and not asking for things she didn’t want to share), and she was watching him wake up beside Eliot. Again.

 

 _Less_ , because-- well, she was watching him wake up beside Eliot _again_. It wasn’t-- it wasn’t exactly a new phenomenon, at this point, as shitty as that made him sound. If anything, it was a new constant of Quentin’s mornings.

 

In his defense, it wasn’t like that very first time, back at Brakebills, anymore-- waking to find her tense and furious and betrayed when he blinked open blurry eyes, trying to make sense of what she was seeing, through the whistle of Eliot’s pillow-smushed breathing and the down-a-hill-too-fast feeling of realizing that was Eliot’s arm and hand across his hips.

 

(Even the smooth, hard lines of Eliot’s rings had been warm. His wedding ring had been, too, back in Fillory, before he stopped wearing it. _Because it got too small_ , he’d said, when Quentin had grabbed and started inspecting the hand trailing at the hem of his sleepshirt, squinting in the early morning light. And Quentin had nodded, because how could he say, _And none of your other rings stopped fitting, just that one, huh?_ , when Eliot might smile, tense, and answer, _that’s okay, Q, you don’t have to_?)

 

It wasn’t like _that_ anymore. He and Eliot weren’t-- they _didn’t_ . Because Quentin was with Alice. (And he _knew_ , okay, that that wasn’t-- the _right_ reason.) And being with Alice, the way they were now-- it made sense, for Quentin. Or, it _had_ made sense, when Eliot was-- when Eliot was-- when there was the Monster, and Quentin hadn’t thought there was a possibility with Eliot, even if-- even _when_ they got him back.

 

In a weird way-- a way that had made Margo call him a dickhole, and _mean_ it, and whisper-yell probably even worse things to Eliot behind the closed door of Eliot’s bedroom, before she stormed off to Fillory and Josh and Fen-- it had made even _more_ sense once Eliot came back ( _thank God thank God thank God_ ) and revealed that, _guess what_ , he _did_ want Quentin after all. Because Quentin always wanted _too much_ from the people and things he loved, from Alice to Eliot to Fillory; how many times did he have to learn that lesson? But he could-- he was learning how to want _less_ than that, with Alice. To be _happy_ with less than that-- seriously. But with Eliot? With Eliot, Quentin had fifty years of sense memory of _needing_ and _taking_ , always _El, El, El_ . And after-- after-- _everything_ , _fuck_ \-- these last six months. Maybe it was time to accept what Eliot had always known, even if he’d forgotten a little, understandably, after being trapped alone inside a monster for so long: that no one would _choose_ to sign up for fifty years of tending to the gaping black hole inside Quentin.

 

So, yeah. It had made sense. And Quentin had had his reasons, even if his throat was tight from swallowing down half of the shit that he wanted to be able to say, because he and Alice _wouldn’t work_ like that. And even if his _palms_ ached, every time he caught sight of Eliot, smiling and sad-eyed and silent-- still giving Quentin exactly what he’d asked for, looking like every one of Quentin’s noble-tragic-hero wet dreams the whole time.

 

And then came _that night_ , last month.

 

 _That night_ , when Quentin had gone out to dinner with Alice, and smiled as she ate ice cream on the walk home, and fucked her and squeezed her gorgeous tits and remembered to say her name when he came, then went to find Eliot as soon as he’d pulled on pants, and soaked in Eliot’s rare-lately smile while they ate gross cereal together on the couch, and pretended not to remember Eliot fucking him on their straw mattress in the morning light and squeezing his ass and choking out that surprised little “ _Q_ ” just before he came.

 

 _That night_ , when Quentin had been jonesing so hard for someone-- for _Eliot_ \-- to sit beside and not sleep _because he can’t anymore, some nights_ and to _need things_ from-- memories and Eliot’s night-hushed voice and his love-drunk eyes and bedtime stories. That night when Quentin ended up holding Eliot while Eliot berated himself for not saying _thank you, more please_ after fifty years of Quentin taking and taking and taking.

 

 _That night_ , when Quentin had scratched through the long curls against Eliot’s neck-- tangled but _clean_ , nothing like the Monster, _thank God_ \-- and let himself ask, quiet in his own head, just as dawn began breaking through: _What if the answer isn’t taking less? What if the answer is giving_ you _more?_

 

 _That_ night, or the next morning, actually, Alice had found them together on the couch, Quentin sitting with his head rolled back against the cushions, Eliot’s face pressed against his shoulder, leaving a drool patch on his henley. (Quentin was actually a much more graceful sleeper than Eliot, ironically-- less of a slobberer, less given to sprawl-- which Quentin took weird pride in, even if Eliot always said it was just because there was so much less of Quentin to spread.) 

 

 _This_ morning, Quentin and Eliot weren’t even touching but they were angled toward each other, Quentin’s knees tucked into his chest, while Eliot’s long legs splayed across the opposite corner of the coffee table from where Alice was sitting.

 

She didn’t look . . . _mad_ , not exactly. She looked-- _determined_ , maybe. Determined to keep pretending that it was _better_ than finding him naked and underneath Eliot-- finding him fully dressed and not even touching Eliot, willing to fuck up his back sleeping on this ridiculous _MTV-Cribs_ -stereotype of a sofa, just to share the same air.

 

 _Oh, Vix_ , he thought, tender. _You’re trying even harder than I am_.

 

“Coffee?” Alice’s voice was tight but quiet. Like-- like she was trying not to _wake_ Eliot.

 

She had on a shirt with a collar and a sweater and a skirt and tights and shoes. Quentin wondered if that was because she knew, already, where this was going, one of these mornings, and she didn’t want to be wearing her pink-and-white smiley-panda pajama pants when it happened. Or maybe that was just him trying to make things easier on himself, pretending she saw it coming. Maybe she just wasn’t a person who wore pajamas outside of the bedroom, even in her home. He didn’t know, he realized. They’d-- they’d crashed for a couple of weeks in each other’s dorms, once upon a time, but they’d never had a _home_ together.

 

He wondered, for a moment, whether, if they _did_ have a home, he and Alice, it would come to mean the same thing to him-- her cute pajamas and the way that she still had those little indents on the side of her nose from her glasses when she first woke up-- as Eliot’s gaping-open mouth and his back-of-the-throat snores and the way he could make it out of bed and over to the cradle and have Teddy against his chest without even cracking his eyes, his matted curls crushed down where they’d gotten caught between his whisker-rough jaw and their even-rougher pillow case.

 

Maybe it was the _time_ , the _fifty fucking years_ , that made this not a fair fight.

 

Or maybe it could never be a fair fight, not with Eliot and whatever it was in him that made it impossible for Quentin not to just keep grabbing at every piece he could reach.

 

Or maybe it was Quentin _himself_ that made everything so goddamn unfair, just by wanting all the wrong things and fucking around like he could change that fact.

 

“Q?” Alice hadn’t raised her voice, but the repetition made Eliot stir. He twisted farther away, rolled his head to face the other direction, moving in the pouty way he always did when he was sleeping. Like he was frustrated that the pillow had dared to go warm, or Quentin had dared to rescue a pins-and-needles arm trapped beneath those bony shoulder blades.

 

Before Quentin even realized he was doing it, he was reaching out, again, not a metaphor this time, but his hand on Eliot’s shoulder, using it to turn him back, asking, _wanting_ , _taking_ \-- _El, El, El_.

 

Eliot came easily, even asleep.

 

His face was marked by the Monster, still, if you knew where to look for it. Quentin _did_ know, and it broke his heart. The dark circles under his eyes, the zits near his hairline from months without _shampoo_ , let alone Eliot’s exacting skin regimen. ( _While I appreciate you instructing it not to explode my heart with cocaine, you might have_ mentioned _curl serum while you had its attention_ , Eliot had said one night on this couch, and it was only the shaking, insomniac terror behind his light tone that had kept Quentin from storming out, back to his and Alice’s bed. That and the memory-echo, equally light, equally layered, of _that’s okay, Q, you don’t have to_ \--)

 

Quentin reached out again, more hesitant, and brought two fingers to brush the side of Eliot’s jaw-- another gift from the Monster, the habitual clenching that was grinding Eliot’s molars to powder, because _a_ nightguard _, Q, you can’t be serious_ . Eliot startled at the touch without waking, then _sighed_ when Quentin cupped his whole palm over Eliot’s jaw, stroking the grain of the stubble with his thumb, until it began to relax.

 

Alice-- _oh fuck, Alice_ \-- made a sound then that wasn’t surprised enough to be a gasp. He looked over to her, already guilty. Her lips weren’t just pursed any more, but _pressed_ shut. Her arms were crossed low around her stomach.

 

“I’m guessing you don’t want _coffee_ , then,” she said, finally, looking away, her mouth curling unhappily as she sniffed. It was the closest she had sounded to _actually Alice_ since the two of _them_ had sat on this couch, while Quentin’s brain was unspooling and the world was ending and he was rapidly losing any hope of saving either _it_ or the man he’d always needed more than made practical sense and who he hadn’t realized at the time might need him even _more_.

 

Quentin shook his head and opened his mouth.

 

 

3.

 

It was late-- more like those first-year mosaic “mornings” than anything an actually functional adult would grant the title-- when Eliot finally opened his eyes. Quentin had come back to the couch, after everything with Alice, and scooted in even closer-- close enough that their noses were almost touching. If Quentin’s hair was as long as it had been, once, it would be tangled with Eliot’s, against the back cushions.

 

Quentin could tell the exact moment when Eliot registered him. His mouth began to curl; his eyes went soft.

 

“ _Hey_ ,” he started, sleep-fuzzy, but Quentin cut him off.

 

Or, rather. Uh. Quentin crossed the inch between them and pressed their mouths together.

 

Eliot went stiff, at first ( _like that first night at the mosaic, just the same_ ), but he melted when Quentin brought both hands up to frame his face. Quentin kissed him harder-- maybe a little too hard, maybe his fingers digging too deep on Eliot’s jaw, maybe his eyes squeezed shut too tight, but he needed-- he needed to _give_ this. To _Eliot_. And he thought, he hoped _maybe_ , maybe, Eliot-- _El_ \-- would let him. Maybe El _wanted_ \--

 

Quentin broke the kiss when his air ran out, but he didn’t go far. He let this thumbs rasp over Eliot’s stubble again.

 

“ _Ask me why I did that_ ,” he demanded, all determination. Because, yeah, he _demanded_ from Eliot. He always had. But he could do _more_ , too.

 

Eliot pulled back, but Quentin didn’t let him go.

 

“It’s okay, Q,” he said, gentle,  “you don’t have to--”

 

And Quentin smiled, both fond and rueful, even as he shook his head. “I _do_ have to, dumbass,” he said, “if you want me to.”

 

He stopped, and drew back then, just far enough that his forehead stopped pressing so tightly into Eliot’s. “Do-- um,” he started, over the frantic rattle of his heart, screaming, _we didn’t ask this question for fifty years for a reason_ . “ _Do_ you want me to?”

 

Eliot’s eyebrows furrowed, and Quentin had known him long enough and well enough to _know_ that this was the part where every fiber of him wanted to toss out an _isn’t it obvious_ . But obvious wasn’t the point. _Asking_ was the point.

 

And Eliot-- _I’m trying to be braver now_ Eliot-- nodded.

 

Quentin pressed their foreheads together again, but thought better of it. Because he wanted to _see_ Eliot, for this.

 

The fingers framing Eliot’s face were trembling, just a little, like his voice was, when he opened his eyes wide, pinning Eliot so he couldn’t look away, and said, clear and serious, like when Teddy was a toddler and Quentin had just needed him to _believe_ something and not question it , _“I did it because I love you_.”

 

Eliot’s face-- _his gorgeous face_ \-- it crumpled then, and he made a keening little whimper, so soft in the back of his throat. And Quentin wanted to press in again and taste it, _take_ it, and he would, but there was more that _Eliot_ needed to take first.

 

“Ask me to choose you this time,” Quentin said, speaking soft and fast now, his mouth against Eliot’s ear as he wrapped his arms around Eliot’s shaking shoulders.

 

“ _Choose me_ ,” Eliot moaned, low and longing, into Quentin’s neck.

 

“ _Yes_ .” Quentin squeezed tighter. “Ask me--” he started again, but Eliot was getting the hang of it now, the _asking_.

 

“ _Break up with Alice_ ,” he said, drawing back so that Quentin could see his hazel eyes, which were red-rimmed and embarrassed and just a little guilty. “God, that's probably awful, and she’s--  but-- but break up with her, baby, and be with _me_.”

 

“I, um, already did,” Quentin answered, also sheepish. “About an hour ago. I-- I was worried it would wake you up, actually. It got a little bit, um, derogatory, toward the end.”

 

They both winced at that, but even still. It wasn't that the burning shame at how he’d treated Alice  _again_ wasn't there. It _was_ there, and it was real, and tomorrow or maybe in a couple hours, the guilt would be bad enough to make him miserable and mean-- not that Eliot didn't know how to deal with that already. But right now, it was hard to focus on anything else  when Eliot looked _happy_ for a change.

 

When Eliot was blinking at him with wet eyelashes, like he couldn’t believe he was so _lucky_ , that Quentin would vomit up all this stupid intense _longing_ that no one else had ever really wanted onto Eliot and Eliot alone.

 

 

“Talk to me about what happened with the Monster, or to _someone_ ,” Eliot was saying now, and Quentin winced again, harder, but he nodded. And then Eliot’s requests were coming so fast that it would have been obvious even to someone who _hadn’t_ lived it that he’d been holding them back for fifty years. _Promise me you’re taking your medicine_ , and _talk to Alice, whenever she’s ready, she’s important to you_ , and _come back with me, to Fillory, or let me stay with you, I don’t really care, just_ \--

 

And it was supposed to be Eliot’s time for asking, now, but Quentin-- Quentin was lover and beloved both, apparently. And he had fifty years of sense memory with Eliot that told him _take, take, take._ So when Eliot unfisted the hand ( _he didn’t have his rings anymore, not since the Monster_ ) in Quentin’s henley and brought it up to smooth back the stupid in-between-length bangs that kept flopping into Quentin’s face as Quentin nodded again and again, Quentin said “ _kiss me_.”

 

After that, it was _touch me_ , and _there_ , and _please, please_ , and after a while it was hard to keep track of who was asking what. But with the late-morning sun pushing through the cracks in the blinds, the answer every time was _yes_.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks very much for reading!


End file.
